


the second coming

by cuttothequickk



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Coffee Shops, Don't Examine This Too Closely, First Time, I'm Sorry, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Philosophy, Pre-Canon, Pretentious, References to Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-31 23:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13985178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuttothequickk/pseuds/cuttothequickk
Summary: you see him when you’ve just ordered a latte.everything is different.





	the second coming

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats.
> 
> I'm sorry this is literally just pretentious bullshit but okay whatever enjoy it or just laugh at me, either is fine.

 

 

 

 

you see him when you’ve just ordered a latte, when you’re tired but refusing to show it, when your hair is long around your shoulders and catching in the loose collar of your shirt, a bother against the back of your neck as you stand in the coffee shop and stare. he is sitting in the back of the café watching you.

 

you know your face is beautiful, strong features with a refined delicacy, porcelain fashioned by dexterous hands that wanted to create a masterpiece in white and gold. you are stunning cheekbones stretching skin gilded with perfection, the cracks beneath the surface hidden under eerie resolve, the glossy look in your eyes the expression of someone who would watch the world end and do nothing. you are fit to shatter, invisible fractures too deep to be repaired.

 

you watch the man in the back of the café as you are handed your latte. you examine his aesthetic. it is nothing like yours. you are waiflike and slender, all cream and violet and glitter dust settled on high cheekbones under glowing-gold eyes, clothes heroin chic and showing off your breakable collarbones, the whole look of you fragile and vacant as a doll. he is tall and lean, all black and glinting silver in the shape of a knife, his tongue, his clothes tight on corded muscle outlined with skin tanner than yours though still pale, his eyes steel-navy and vigilant, his animal solidity striking you through with an awareness of how hollow you are. you are a vessel; he is an instrument.

 

you give no indication that he has so struck you even as you hold his gaze, your expression neutral and your posture apathetic as always; but then he is watching you, too, and his presence appears as unchanged as yours. his eyes are as dark as his hair, his clothes, his expression, if you were to venture out of the realm of the literal and into that of the figurative.

 

you take a step and it is not _away._ you are braver for it, as if one step is all it takes to trade your apathy for fear and for the strength to conquer it, as if feeling anything is enough to make you feel everything, even if you don’t feel it all at once.

 

he is standing to receive you and his coffee is black and his handwriting is scrawled across the papers spread out across the table, the look of it curved and angled both, the shapes strange approximations of your more spindly, spidery strokes. you can feel the shift as you look him over, the way everything turns from cinematic, uncontrollable blur into sharp, crystal clear reality over which you have some semblance of jurisdiction. where once you saw only black and white, two-dimensional lines scrawling ever-on with no way to go but forward or back ( _unimaginable_ ), you have awakened into a place where everything is gradient color, violet and ivory and cloudy silver-gold. you have velocity, and you have 360 degrees to use as you will, and you have him in front of you looking you over as your knees go shaky and you wish all of a sudden for a cigarette.

 

“who are you,” he murmurs when you stop just a step in front of his table. you are holding your latte in fingers draped artfully against the paper cup, and he regards you with the kind of critical care that says he knows you are all façade and nothing beneath, and he likes it.

 

maybe that’s why he asks for your whole identity instead of just your name. as if he knows there is a something-ness to the nothing that is you. that you are a presence in your absence, a black hole lurking silent and gaping at the center of a ricocheting universe, your pull keeping everything together even as you tear things all apart.

 

“who are you,” you say in a lilting voice, casual like the syllables are a dance for your tongue to skip through. you are putting on a show for him and he knows it, and he blinks his eyes soft on slow acknowledgment of that which has been laid before him, which is to say: you.

 

“kougami shinya,” he says, and it is everything, and it is not enough.

 

“makishima shougo,” you whisper. you take a breath. you get a handle of this brave new world you have entered. you are excited. you are scared.

 

you are falling. literally. he is grabbing your arm and guiding you into a chair, and he is brushing white hair out of your eyes, and he is taking your latte away before you spill it, and you are sitting there letting him do this like you’re his puppet, and you think you will let it look that way because he knows, and you know, that you are not.

 

he does not ask if you are okay. he certainly knows. there is no answer you could give to elucidate the point that you are not.

 

he is not gentle even though he is. there is this electric tenderness to the way he keeps his hands on your shoulders, the presence of him overwhelming and stealing your breath from your chest, or maybe that’s just the never-ending weight of existence pressing your lungs to collapsing and he’s the thing that’s keeping you whole.

 

he has to take his hands away at some point, though, and he does it sooner rather than later, leaving you bereft and aching. he sits down across from you like he hasn’t just sent you spinning headfirst into existential unrest. the cool confidence of his gaze does nothing to calm your racing heart, but then his hand lights on your knuckles and all the adrenaline is neutralized like he’s sucked it from you with his touch. you stare at the place where your skin touches his and take a terrified breath.

 

“why did you come over,” he asks.

 

“didn’t have time to stop it,” you murmur, as if anyone but you would understand what this means. except he’s nodding, and he looks just a bit wistful as he glances out the window towards the place where the sun has just disappeared over the horizon, the crisp of spring, of cherry blossoms and new life, lying peaceful across the metropolis. there’s a vulnerability to him, then, that makes you look away, cheeks going pale pink with blush.

 

“that happens a lot, doesn’t it,” he muses. “time is always running out.”

 

“we are young, but it feels like we’re old,” you say, going suddenly sardonic and calm because this—this you _know_ , philosophy and literary words setting you at ease in a way even he cannot. “we’re so close to death. how could we get any older?”

 

“that’s _catch-22_ ,” he says. “it’s about war. not coffee shops.”

 

“are we not at war?”

 

he shrugs. “sure. but that’s very pretentious of you.”

 

you scoff, but it’s almost a laugh, the closest you’ve come in ages. you offer a conciliatory blink. he bites his lip, and it’s so sensuous you’re surprised he hasn’t been taken in by the government just to make sure he’s not a threat to the common good for having expressed this, for having expressed anything. how dare he. how dare anyone.

 

“where are you from,” he asks, apparently ready to get to the dirty part, the passé nitty-gritty of reality, the part where you have to _get to know each other_ , the unbeautiful details that will make you into not-strangers, because a world of bone-deep shared sentiments cannot teach you the little things of each other that are begging to be known. you can know his heart in an instant, but knowing _him_ will take a lifetime.

 

you find it strange that you want to know all of him, even the unglamorous parts.

 

but. “nowhere,” you say, because you have no real answer to his question. you wave a delicate hand, and it looks so pale in the dim light of the coffee shop. “tokyo.”

 

“who isn’t from tokyo nowadays,” he scoffs.

 

you nod. “right.”

 

“and also from nowhere.”

 

“are you from somewhere?”

 

he shakes his head. “do you like it?” he asks.

 

“does it matter?”

 

he gives you a look like he thinks everything matters. the opposite of you, in every conceivable way, and so integral to you because of it. things are defined through opposition, you are well aware.

 

“do you like it?” you ask, a mockery of his question and yet—not quite a mockery.

 

“no,” he says. he doesn’t sound dismissive. he sounds resolute. “there is nothing left to like, or to dislike. everything has been trivialized to the point of absurdity.”

 

you huff out another almost-laugh. twice in but a few minutes. how quaint, how vulnerable. “that’s why it doesn’t matter.”

 

“that’s why it matters.”

 

“do we matter?”

 

he appraises you like a vase, a grecian urn, maybe. or maybe a looking glass. “we matter more than anything.”

 

“just us?” you ask. “or everyone?”

 

he inclines his head. “you tell me.”

 

“i’m 24 years old. what would i know?”

 

he inclines his head. “you seem to know more than most.”

 

“we need not know anything. we have the system to do the knowing for us,” you say gesturing around a bit at the air, because how else can you indicate that which you are trying to indicate, which is the insidious eye in the sky which rules over the city.

 

he narrows his eyes. “you should be careful. she is watching even now.”

 

“she watches everyone. what interest would she have in me?”

 

“does she have interest in you?”

 

“none.”

 

he looks skeptical, his eyes darting to the side as his lips thin. “i work for her.”

 

“do you.”

 

“we keep people safe. the people i work with.”

 

“you mean _she_ keeps people safe.”

 

“that’s not what i mean.”

 

you tilt your head back, amused. a smirk paints your lips. you take a moment to look at him this way, and then he let your chin drop as you take the first sip of your latte. you’ve only just remembered it’s there. “fascinating. your…position in life.”

 

he looks at you in equal parts evaluation and appreciation. “whatever you think, think the opposite.”

 

“no,” you say, “or perhaps i mean ‘yes’. to see inside your head, i should certainly trade my thoughts for whatever their opposite.”

 

“how do you know?”

 

“how does anyone know anything?”

 

“even things that are known are often known incorrectly.”

 

“elaborate.”

 

he looks out the window. “you might believe something, and that something might be true, but you might have the incorrect evidence. you’re only right on accident.”

 

“edmund gettier. getting sophisticated.”

 

he shakes his head. “it’s an obvious problem.”

 

“with no obvious solutions.”

 

“if you believe a particular condition and the condition is true, but your evidence is wrong and you’re only right on accident, do you have knowledge at all?”

 

“no one has knowledge, period,” you say. “we have sensation and perception, and some primitive notion that we can interpret it, and that’s all.”

 

“sensation,” he says. “‘all sensation is already memory.’”

 

“bergson,” you say. “now you’re just showing off. how do you _feel_ about this idea?”

 

“i don’t like memory.”

 

“what’s not to like? memory gives us access to the past, to our own origins. what are we except for memories?”

 

“who said that?”

 

“i did.”

 

“no, you didn’t,” he says.

 

“it’s cognitive science,” you say, waving your hand. “i don’t know who said it.”

 

“come home with me,” he instructs.

 

you incline your head.

 

you walk home together discussing philosophy. it is pedantic, so erudite is it practically farce. you quote kant and he pushes at your shoulder like a joke. you shudder with the intimacy of it and quote hegel just to make him do it again.

 

“do you like shakespeare?” he asks, opening the door to his apartment.

 

“do you like breathing?”

 

“not particularly.”

 

“but it’s necessary,” you say, following him inside and slipping off your shoes. you align the two pairs next to each other and they couldn’t look more different: his leather and heavy and black, yours canvas and dainty and cream. “you have to do it or you’ll stop being.”

 

“i don’t like that much, either.”

 

“it’s shockingly mundane, isn’t it?”

 

“not much like being alive at all, most of the time,” he says. “is that how you feel about shakespeare?”

 

you offer a wicked flash of teeth. “i love shakepeare. he aches like breathing.”

 

he nods, says nothing. the interior of his home is utilitarian and sparse. you like how everything is white and gray and chrome.

 

“stay the night.”

 

“where else would i go?”

 

“home.”

 

“don’t be sentimental.”

 

“your apartment, then,” he amends, looking at you again like he’s appraising you for sale.

 

you shake your head. “who cares. i’m here now.”

 

he inclines his head. “you can sit down, you know.”

 

you don’t want to be shorter than him, but then he’s standing in front of you and you realize you already are. not by much, but it’s enough to make your resistance moot. you fall onto the couch, graceful and intentional as always. he rolls his eyes, unimpressed.

 

“you don’t have to act with me,” he says.

 

“it’s not an act. this is who i am.”

 

“you put on a good show,” he says. “like a puppet, really. but you’re not.”

 

you quiver beneath his gaze. “you could sit down next to me,” you suggest, and it sounds desperate, and he tilts his head.

 

“i’ll make tea,” he says instead of sitting. you wait for him in silence, relaxing into the cushions and staring at his white ceiling.

 

“shougo,” he says from the kitchen, “what do you eat?”

 

“anything,” you say. “nothing. why are you calling me ‘shougo’?”

 

“nigiri?”

 

“who doesn’t eat nigiri?”

 

“you seem like you might be vegetarian or something.”

 

“don’t be ridiculous.”

 

he laughs. _laughs_. “i’m not. you just seem the type.”

 

you frown. “i’m not any type.”

 

“you’re being childish.”

 

he appears in the doorway and you offer up a pout. _what is happening._ “go away.”

 

“would you like sushi for dinner?”

 

“yes.” petulant. you sound petulant. is this flirting?

 

he smirks.

 

“go away or bring maguro. wasabi, too,” you say. “shinya.” you tilt your head a little against the pillow on his couch. his smirk turns into some expression that isn’t a smile but somehow at the same time is. yes. definitely flirting.

 

“whatever you like,” he says, soft, reassuring.

 

you shiver, and play back the scene in your mind, and shiver again, but less. _all sensation is already memory._ you want his hands on you. you do not understand why. you have never before been partial to sensations of the flesh.

 

he returns to you with the meal he has promised. you are offered chopsticks and soy sauce and, as requested, a little mound of green wasabi, which you’re sure is not _real_ wasabi as it never is anymore, not in this day and age, not when your food is provided to you by a system such as the one under which you live.

 

he looks at you as you take your chopsticks between your delicate fingers and eat the fish, the rice, the wasabi. you savor the taste and think about how his skin will feel under your delicate mouth. delicate, delicate, delicate, you are, and he is unadulterated strength. he looks at you with eyes that reshape you under the intensity of their gaze. his hands come up, both of them, to run through your hair as you take another piece of fish into your body, chewing slowly and swallowing the sustenance he has provided you. it is intimate, the more because he is not eating, his hands making and remaking you with every brush of fingertips along your ears, your scalp, his attention focused solely on you. your eyes flutter shut. you sigh out all the life in you and then draw breath back only because he is here to compel you. when you have eaten your fill, you set your chopsticks down and list towards him, unable to resist his care.

 

he leans back against the couch and draws you against him, cleaving tight to your shoulders, his hands so big against your back and pressing bruises into your skin through your shirt. it is not enough, it is not enough, it is not enough.

 

“take off my clothes,” you request, and he shakes his head.

 

“come to bed.”

 

“do i know you?”

 

“from another life, maybe.”

 

“from things yet to come.”

 

“what things are yet to come?”

 

you swallow, let him lead you to the bedroom. shades of white, shades of gray, shades of silver. silver-blue eyes and you are painted golden in the light he flicks on as you are pressed towards the mattress.

 

“i might break,” you say. “i have done things you cannot imagine.”

 

“we are young yet,” he says. “you will do worse, and so will i.”

 

“we will be each other’s end.”

 

“in a different way, i think, than was meant.”

 

you swallow and look up at him. he stands over you and you feel—

 

“scared. i’m scared.”

 

he looks at you. takes your hand. kisses your knuckles. “why are you scared?”

 

you shake hair out of your eyes. “it’s not supposed to be this way.”

 

“is that it?”

 

you bite your lip. really look at him. his power sits thick and ropey under his skin. yours is a caress, a glamour put on to seduce compliance from him, and he recognizes it, and shields you from yourself.

 

“no,” you admit. “i’ve never felt fear before.”

 

“i have. all the time.”

 

perhaps he says it for the irony of it—that he is the strong one and he is afraid, while you are set to shatter and apathetic to the last.

 

“take off my clothes,” you say again, and this time he listens. you are motionless under his fingers until he guides you into position, slipping you from the shroud of your shirt, from your trousers and the random articles leftover: socks, underwear, things that are not beautiful.

 

“should i take off mine?”

 

“yes,” you say, shutting your eyes and falling back against his pillows. your arms are spread to the side, your legs straight in an awful parody of crucifixion. you are going to hell. you are already there.

 

he strips out of his clothes, leaves everything in a pile on the floor. you wonder what it will look like when, one day, you return home with him and press your mouth to his so frantically that you are shoved against his door, your clothes pulled off in a trail through the apartment until you reach this bedroom, and his falling away the same. you think of days to come, of nights to come, of how strange this is because you don’t go home with strangers, of how strange this is because he is not a stranger.

 

“shougo,” he says again. “what can i do?”

 

“touch me,” you whisper. you are both whispering, as if that will stop your audience from hearing you, but of course it won’t. she can hear you everywhere. she knows. you know she knows.

 

she does nothing to stop you.

 

he kneels over you and pins you down with his gaze.

 

“how?”

 

“ribs,” you say, a gasp because he’s looking at you and it’s breathtaking. you have to force your diaphragm to clench and draw air back inside of you. you don’t want air inside you. you only want him.

 

he presses one hand to your side, high enough that his fingers go in the grooves of your ribcage. you shudder out another breath, startled that it doesn’t come out sparkling gold and shimmery. that’s impossible, you think, but then he is pressing his forehead to yours and you think maybe everything is _._

 

you think he will kiss you but then he doesn’t, because his fingers are at your lips instead, and he is trailing rough-calloused fingertips across your mouth, and you let your jaw go slack as he fits two fingers in to rest on your tongue, just a gentle weight that makes you whimper, your eyelids so heavy they drop closed against your will. you are trembling, your teeth would be chattering if they could but they can’t because his fingers are there, and you are strung so taut out of nowhere, how is he doing this, how is he here?

 

his other hand is still at your ribs, his knees going up to fit underneath your thighs as he moves so your ankle rests over his shoulder; you are at his mercy in every way conceivable, you are bent to his will and sucking his fingers now, your tongue laving knuckles and nails and ridges of fingertips. you feel strung-out and high, your head spinning on the chemical dump he’s created: adrenaline and serotonin and dopamine and whatever else there is to make you feel like you’re falling, and he’s the only thing keeping you from crashing.

 

“shougo,” he whispers, still hovering over you. you whimper again and then remember your hands and let them come up to hold him to you, to tug him down and he collapses against you and ducks his head against your neck and you’re shaking, shaking, _shaking_ , Jesus, how is this happening? how is this real?

 

“shougo,” he says again, “you can speak, if you want.” he draws his fingers from your mouth and lets them fall around your throat, not tight but heavy and pressing, and you gasp and arch against him, thirsting and yearning and fit to break.

 

“shinya,” you whisper, just a splintered gasp that makes him groan and press himself all against you. “shinya, shinya.”

 

“shougo, can you come like this?”

 

“yes,” you say, because you can. “but don’t let me. take me apart.”

 

“yes,” he says, and he does.

 

it is early morning rather than late night by the time you finally shatter, a ragdoll in his arms. his essence is inside you, his body melded to yours, sweat and tears staining his sheets as you lie sex-stunned in his arms.

 

he presses a kiss to the nape of your neck and offers to go get a cloth.

 

“no, leave it,” you say, trembling. your eyes shut, and for the first time in days, you allow yourself some rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you wake and everything hurts, just lightly. just a pale sort of ache through your arms, your legs, your abdomen, your head. your lips are dry and chapped, your eyes swollen with the rest you rarely get. you lie limp against the mattress and let your consciousness extend to every warm inch of your skin, mapping out your position, reveling in the texture of soft cotton against your body. you have never before been so thrilled with the physicality of your existence, except for last night, when you were falling to pieces with only his hands holding you together.

 

you let your eyes flutter open and realize that you are facing vacant space instead of a warm body, and there is a part of you that wants to whine with the awareness of your loss. but then he is appearing in the doorway holding mochi and steaming mugs that smell of green tea, and you raise your chin just enough to meet his gaze, all your bones weak and crumbling.

 

“it isn’t new year’s,” you say, because the sustenance he has brought you is the traditional food of january first, not mid-march.

 

he nods. “i know. but it’s light enough you’ll be able to eat it.”

 

you blink in confusion, too wrung-out and spellbound to even manage a raised eyebrow. “what do you mean?”

 

“you don’t eat enough. i didn’t think you’d enjoy pancakes with whipped cream,” he says, his voice curving on amusement, and suddenly you realize: he will let you be anything you are without question, and at the same time he will try to piece you back together.

 

“i don’t really want to eat mochi either.”

 

“can you sit up?”

 

you’re not sure.

 

“come here,” he says, all soft and gentle as he settles in against his pillows and sets the tea and mochi on the nightstand to pick you up and lean your body against his. you go willingly, tucking yourself into him and resting your legs overtop of his thighs.

 

“i think i’m going crazy,” you say, to yourself, and to him.

 

he pulls apart the sticky mochi and dips it in sugar, and then he presses it to your waiting tongue. you chew and swallow, and it is not the worst thing that you’ve done or felt.

 

“that’s okay,” he says. “i’ll keep you safe.”

 

you get this flash of the way things could be: a future of scarlet-splattered blood and plasticized atrocities and gold-glazed fields under pink-orange skies.

 

you look around the bedroom all lavender and white and gray and wonder at the fear inside you, and you listen to rain tap-tap-tapping at the window as you tremble-tremble-tremble in his arms, content.


End file.
